Translating Jokes for Dubbed Television Situation Comedies

TLDR: In this paper, Spanish and Catalan dubbed versions of English TV comedy series such as "Yes, Minister" are examined, with special attention to wordplay as a particular instance of the more general problem of translating comedy for television.

Abstract: This paper examines Catalan and Spanish dubbed versions of English TV comedy series such as ‘Yes, Minister’, with special attention to wordplay as a particular instance of the more general problem of translating comedy for television. The objective is to show that producing foreign-language dubbed versions of audiovisual texts has enough in common with other types of translating assignments to be included within translation studies, as well as to contribute to the area of quality assessment and evaluation of translations by proposing that the criteria for judging a translation should be clear, flexible and realistic, and should take into account the translator’s limitations and working environment. The paper also proposes a classification of jokes, with further examples from translations of British situation comedy into Catalan, and presents the concept of ‘stylebook’ as a helpful bridge between general statements about translation and specific contextualized translating assignments.